In the video for Lael Neale’s recent single, In Verona, she takes us on a woozy walk through the streets of Hollywood. Alongside grainy footage of the Walk of Fame, we find her drifting through the mausoleums of Hollywood Forever, a celebrity cemetery on the same block as Paramount studios, as she hypnotically chants about “perfect death”, prayer and purity. As ritzy as any red carpet premiere, Hollywood Forever is where stars such as Rudolph Valentino, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney share a final resting place with the author Eve Babitz, director Cecil B DeMille and rock stars Chris Cornell and Mark Lanegan. Neale likes to pop in every now and then. “I love going to the graveyard – I feel like that’s the Harold and Maude in me,” she says, referencing her favourite movie, Hal Ashby’s cult 1971 film about a death-obsessed teenager.
Neale also enjoys a stroll around the sprawling Forest Lawn memorial park. “It’s the Disneyland of cemeteries,” she explains. As well as housing the crypt of Elizabeth Taylor, it has a Scottish-themed wedding chapel and a five-metre-tall replica of Michelangelo’s David. “It’s made to be a place where you go and have this experience, which is so Hollywood.”
